Four

  

The next day brought cloudy skies and madness in the form of more police activity. The Winsome police force, all five officers, had cordoned off the barn and a portion of the grass behind it the night before in order to preserve evidence. The county coroner had arrived some time past eight and pronounced Simon officially dead before removing his body. Crime scene investigators took pictures and videos, dusted for fingerprints, used luminol to examine the rest of the barn, and searched outside for footprints—a mostly thankless task, given the recent rains. When Megan argued that she needed access to the barn in order to work, she was told firmly “no”—police business. She’d have to wait in case the police needed to regain entry to the crime scene.

And here they were to continue their investigation. They’d kept their promise.

“Megan, tell me again where you were between the hours of twelve noon and six in the evening on May fourteenth.”

“She’s already told you that five times,” Clover said. Clover had arrived at the farm right after Police Chief Bob King pulled in, so soon after that Megan suspected she’d followed him.

“Well, Clover—” he glared at his girlfriend “—she can tell me again.”

King looked at Megan for a response. Megan wiped her hands on her jeans and turned to look at Winsome’s young police chief. “I’ve repeated the story at least five times over. This is not a television show. You’re not going to get a different answer on try six.”

But King remained stalwart. “Humor me.”

And so she did, all the while continuing her task of collecting last night’s eggs. She had to keep her wits about her, and murder or not, there was work to be done—hard as it was to concentrate. When she had finished, King jotted down a few more notes in his small spiral pad.

“What can you be writing in there, Bobby?” Clover asked. “She told you the same story every time.”

King, a tall, broad man with a blonde crewcut and more determination than common sense, looked at his on-again, off-again girlfriend with annoyance. They were outside by the chicken tractors. He had been following Megan from task to task, ignoring Sadie’s plaintive requests to play fetch. Because the store opening was delayed, Clover said she was here to help with the farm chores, although the term “helping” was only loosely applicable.

King ignored Clover. “So you go to the church cemetery often?” he asked. “To talk to your dead husband?”

Clover elbowed him in the stomach.

“Clover, that hurts. I am a sworn police officer and someone died here. Please let me do my job.” He turned to Megan. “I’m sorry if that sounded insensitive. Maybe someone saw you? Someone who can vouch for your whereabouts.”

Megan stood, the basket of eggs hanging from her elbow. “Bobby, are you trying to tell me I’m a suspect in Simon’s death?”

King’s face colored. Although he was a few years younger than Megan, his family went back at least as far as the Birch family—and he’d never left. “Now, you know I have to do my job. And Duvall did die on your property.”

“And you think I would be stupid enough to kill him, leave him there so that I could discover him with Dr. Finn, and then call you?”

Clover placed a single watercolor green egg in the basket and nodded emphatically. “You have to admit—that would be pretty dumb.”

King gave Clover a withering look. “And maybe that’s what she wants us to think. She could have killed Simon in a fit of anger and then panicked. She’s a lawyer, Clover. She would be banking on us thinking she’s too smart to do something that dumb.”

Clover arched thin eyebrows. “Listen to yourself.”

Megan left them alone to argue. She walked away from the chicken tractors, making her way through the mixed flock of chickens—Chanteclers, Delawares, Orpingtons, and a few Plymouth Rocks—and opened the padlock on the walk-in refrigerator outside the barn. She placed the eggs inside. Behind her, Clover’s angry monologue said the pair were following her.

“Megan, tell him you didn’t kill Simon.”

“Of course I didn’t kill Simon.”

King sighed. “It’s not that simple, Clover.”

Megan closed the refrigerator door—without the store and café, what was she going to do with all those eggs?—thought better of it, and reached back inside. She pulled the basket back out.

“Bobby, I need to get into the barn.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

“Then you go in for me.”

He frowned. “What for?”

“There’s a big box by the doors, under a tarp. It’s marked ‘cartons.’ Bring that out here?”

“Seriously, Megan?”

Clover looked at him beseechingly. She ran a finger down the arm of his uniform in a playful gesture. He shrugged her hand away, but Megan could see him softening. Clover was hard to resist.

He shook his head. “Fine.”

He was back a minute later with the box. Megan opened it, pulled out three egg cartons, and knelt down on the still-muddy ground. She filled the cartons with the morning’s bounty, taking time to mix the browns, blues and greens so that each carton looked balanced in color and size. There were still more than two dozen eggs left over in the basket—enough to satisfy Bibi. She handed one carton to Clover and two to Bob.

“Thanks,” Clover said.

King looked down at the eggs in his hand. “What are these for?”

“Eating,” Megan said with a smile. “One for you and one for your mother.”

“Aw, thank you. She’ll like that.” King’s blue eyes narrowed. “Is this a bribe?”

Clover scowled. “Bobby!”

Megan stood. “You really have seen one too many episodes of CSI.” She placed the basket back in the refrigerator and secured the padlock. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to help Clay transplant tomatoes.” She looked up at the sky, wishing for the warmth of the sun on her face. It would be nice if the ground would finally dry out.

“I have more questions,” King said.

“Then by all means, join me.” Megan glanced at Clover. “Why don’t you run the eggs up to the house and check on my grandmother? If she has any of her cherry Danish left, bring it down. I’m sure Bobby and the others are hungry.”

King gave her another suspicious look, which she dismissed with a wave of one chapped hand. “I have absolutely nothing to hide. Ask me whatever you want, but let me get my work done. One way or another, I have a farmers market to attend next week, and I need to be able to sell something other than mud.” She looked around the farm, her eyes settling on Clay’s narrow figure in the distance. She knew her need to work had as much to do with escaping thoughts of Simon’s murder—and the fact that a murderer was still at large in Winsome—but she had to do something. Something was better than worrying, after all. “And as of right now, mud is about all I have to offer.”

Undeterred, King followed Megan to the fields and through the deer fencing, where she picked up a tray of tomato seedlings and a small shovel. Clay Hand, Megan’s farm manager and Clover’s older brother, had turned over the bed, and Megan selected a row far enough from Clay that she could talk to the police chief without being overheard. She began to dig a small hole at one end of the row and waited for King’s follow-up questions. She’d sent Clover to the house in order to give him some time to ask hard questions without his girlfriend’s interruptions. The way Megan saw it, King had real potential, but youth and a desire to please had him convinced he could handle Clover and the investigation. As much as Megan hated this process, she had enough respect for the law to want it done right. She also wanted to be crossed off the suspect list—as quickly as possible.

“Would you like me to get you a chair?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine.” He paused and, although Megan’s gaze was on the task at hand, she heard him rifling through his notebook. “I understand you had an argument with Simon the day he was killed.”

“As I told you last night, it wasn’t an argument. It was a disagreement.”

“Over the permits for the store and farm?”

“Correct.”

A pregnant silence forced Megan to consider her options. She knew her disagreement with the zoning commissioner would be the subject of town gossip, but she also knew she wasn’t the only person in Winsome who had a beef with Simon Duvall.

“Megan, you know how this looks. What can you tell me to help me shift my focus? Who else might have wanted Simon dead?”

Megan looked up, surprised. She rubbed her temple with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of mud across her forehead. “Seriously? He was the zoning commissioner and the head of the Historical Society. I bet if you dig, you’ll find a hundred people with something against Simon.”

“How much money do you have tied up in this—” Bob stopped to look around “—project?”

“Do you think that’s relevant?”

Bob looked chagrined. “If Simon was threatening your businesses—and your bottom line—yes, I think it’s relevant.”

“I’m in the black. For now, at least.” Megan shook her head. “You want more information than that, you’ll have to get a warrant. Our finances are our business.” She pushed the tip of the shovel into the wet ground and dug a spot about six inches deep. “In the meantime, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Winsome has a killer on the loose, and he or she doesn’t reside at Washington Acres.”

“What about the bid?”

“What bid?” But Megan felt her shoulders tensing. The bid Neil Dorfman had mentioned yesterday? Was it somehow related to Simon’s murder?

“Bonnie was entertaining an offer from Duvall. To buy the place on behalf of the Historical Society.”

Megan placed her shovel on the ground. She straightened, kneeling on one knee, and met King’s gaze. “My grandmother never mentioned that to me.” Which was the truth.

“That doesn’t seem right. Clover says you two are real close.”

Megan shrugged. “If you want to know about my grandmother’s dealings with the Historical Society, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her.”

“You’re going play hard ball with me? Really?”

“I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know anything. Ask Bonnie.”

King took an audible breath. “You seem awful calm for a lady with a dead body in her backyard. Doesn’t it make you wonder who hates you enough to frame you for murder?”

Megan kept her voice metered to hide her rising frustration. “I am angry, scared, and very sad for the Duvall family. But I’m not sure you can jump to the conclusion that I’m being framed any more than you can conclude I did it.”

“Simon was a resident of this town his whole life. I think his murder is as much about you and this farm as about him.”

“Did you find anything at the crime scene yesterday to support that?”

“You know I can’t divulge that.”

“Look, I don’t think Simon was a well-liked man. It’s quite possible someone simply followed him here. The fact that his murder took place on our property was happenstance.” But even as Megan uttered the words, she wondered whether they were true.

“Had you arranged to meet him here last night?”

“No. I don’t know why he was here.” Which, Megan realized, did call into question whether someone simply followed Simon. Why had he come in the first place? “Ask around, Bobby. Simon wasn’t easy to deal with. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who had issues with him.”

“Simon was a pillar of Winsome.”

“Then Winsome is standing on some mighty unsteady ground.”

King sucked on the end of his pen, contemplating Megan’s words. “You’re not planning any trips in the near future, are you, Megan?”

Megan twisted pale lips into a smile. She waved her hand in the direction of the fields, sodden and dotted with fledgling plants. “I’ll be right here, where I belong.”

He nodded, but his eyes said maybe Winsome wasn’t quite the right place for Megan and her projects after all.

  

Clay had another opinion on the matter. He and Megan were turning over a small bed along the western wall of the house that would soon be home to wildflowers. In addition to brightening up the yard and attracting pollinators, the wildflowers would make great bouquets that Megan planned to sell at the café and farmers markets. Clay had started on one end of the fifty-foot bed and Megan on the other, but after a few hours of intensive labor—work that made Megan’s muscles ache and reigned in her wandering, worried mind—they’d met in the middle.

“He was a bastard,” Clay said. “I don’t care what King says. No one liked Duvall, not even his mother.”

Clay spoke between huffed breaths. He wore low-slung jeans and a thick plaid flannel shirt. As always, his beard was neatly trimmed and his longish brown hair was held back in a ponytail. One thick strand had come loose and flopped across his face as he worked. He wiped the hair back with impatient swipes of long, strong fingers.

A stunningly handsome man, Clay had Pierce Brosnan’s eyes and Jake Gyllenhaal’s smile, but without a hint of narcissism. He and his sister had grown up in a commune. Like Clover, there was something almost naïve about his honest approach to the world, and Megan was afraid that eventually the world in all its cruelty would rob him of that innocent outlook.

Megan raked a section of soil and sprinkled seeds in the shallow furrows. “King called Simon a pillar.”

“There’s the public face and the private face. If you ask around, people will say good things about Duvall, even now. Simon had power and no one wanted to cross him.” Clay stopped, resting his arm across the top of his new shovel, a shovel he’d had to buy from Merry Chance’s nursery because the rest of the shovels were tied up behind police tape. “But behind closed doors…well, that’s when you’ll learn how people really felt about the man.”

“Like what?”

“Like he was a pompous, controlling ass who used his power to get others to do his bidding.”

“And what bidding would that be?”

Clay shrugged. “Depended on the day. Voting for him to be commissioner, getting someone he didn’t like off the zoning board, driving customers to or away from a given business, enforcing the Beautification Board’s directives.” He smiled. “Like I said, he wasn’t well liked.”

This wasn’t news to Megan, but Clay’s knowledge of the townsfolks’ sentiments was a surprise. “How do you know that much about the zoning commissioner?”

Clay smiled. “Shocking?”

“You’ve never struck me as a gossip.”

Clay shrugged, but some of the humor had left his eyes. “When you grow up the way I did, you learn to pay attention to people. Besides, the few times I’ve run into his mother, Lenora, I didn’t much care for our interactions. She’s…self-righteous.”

Megan considered the little she knew of the Duvall family. She’d seen Lenora here and there but had never spoken with her. An iron-haired, tight-lipped woman with impeccable posture, she certainly hadn’t struck Megan as warm and fuzzy. Lenora had been a history professor at NYU for many years, returning to Winsome a decade ago. Now she wrote scholarly articles and lorded over the Beatification Board. “And Duvall never married?”

“Never, as far as I know. Winsome and his career have been his life. That and history. He was a history buff.”

“Like Lenora?”

“More of a hobbyist than Lenora, but maybe even more passionate.” Clay sprinkled seeds in the last furrow, then stood straight and picked up his shovel. “Simon is—was—an odd bird, but I can’t imagine who’d want him dead.” He shook his head. “Things like that simply don’t happen in Winsome.”

Megan thought about the goats’ escape and the cat inside the house. Was it possible someone had been on the property the morning of Duvall’s demise? Or even the night before? The thought was unsettling.

Clay started toward the small shed they were using as makeshift storage until the police finished with the barn. When he was a few feet away, he turned around.

“You need to be careful, Meg,” he said, a look of concern in his deep-set eyes. “There could be more here than meets the eye. I’ve lived here for fifteen years and I’m still considered a newcomer. You’re a prodigal daughter returned. Hard to say who’s happy to see you and who’s not thrilled you’re back.”

“You think I’ve ruffled someone’s feathers without realizing it?” Megan asked. She thought of King’s hypothesis—was someone trying to set her up?

Clay shrugged. “Until King and his henchmen figure out who killed Duvall, I would watch who you trust.”

Megan tilted her head, giving Clay an inquisitive nod. “And whom can I trust, Clay?”

“For now? Your grandmother, of course. And me and Clover. And Denver Finn. But other than us?” He answered with an apologetic smile.

Megan stood still, thinking. She looked toward the barn, at the trampled grass and grimy footprints that evidenced recent police activity, and considered what Clay was saying. He was right. Winsome was a small town, but people—with all their human frailties—were, in the end, just people. Perhaps those shortcomings were better hidden in a small town out of necessity, but they still existed. Someone could feel threatened by her return. But who—and why?

“In the meantime,” Clay said, “we need to figure out who will clean up the crime scene. I can do it, once King gives the okay.” The look of distaste on his face told Megan what he thought about that idea.

Megan shook her head. “I’ve already called a crime scene cleanup crew, a firm King recommended. They’ll be here later today.”

“Will the police pick up the tab?”

Megan smiled. “Hardly.” She nodded toward the fields. “Let’s hope insurance covers it. Otherwise, we’d better sell a lot of vegetables.”